Two Tears
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AT, 03/06] She'd been the catalyst. He'd been the killer. Both of them were stained with blood, blades that could only cut more wounds no matter how others tried to heal them. And neither of them had enough left to atone with.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King, Training Peak task, for the AU Devils of Doom Challenge, 280 – double suicide, the Hats Challenge, Juri/Yuu, and for the Diversity Challenge, C8 – drabble novel.

* * *

**Two Tears**

**/1/**

She could never cry enough.

Everybody asked her to stop. Begged. Ordered. Coaxed.

She could never stop. She could never bring herself to stop.

She could never cry enough to make up for what she had cost them all, no matter how they asked.

Nor did she deserve to reach that impossible height, because that would mean everything was forgiven, everything forgotten. They might have forgiven her. Or so they said. She could not forgive herself.

It was her penance. To cry but to never be able to cry enough, as much as they deserved.

She could – and would – never shed enough tears to equal their blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two Tears**

**/2/**

He could never shed a tear. He didn't have that right. He'd been the one to cause that tragedy. To destroy homes, destroy digimon –

He even killed another human. There wasn't anyone in two worlds who could truly forgive him.

They tried to tell him they had. They tried to coax him out of his silence, into the sun.

The sun was that boy he'd killed. The sun was his sister's bright eyes he'd stolen away. The sun was that other boy's blond hair stained permanently with blood.

He did that. And more.

He wondered which of those it was that had killed him as well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Two Tears**

**/3/**

She could never bleed enough.

Someone always stopped her, but even without that, it was never enough. She didn't have enough blood in her body to cover all those dead, all those she'd killed.

She didn't even have enough blood for Leomon.

They told her it wasn't her fault. She hadn't held the gun, the sword. Who cared? She'd been the catalyst. The soil wouldn't have turned red and black without her.

They told her that her blood wouldn't bring them back.

At least that part was true.

But there was nothing else. Not enough tears. Not enough blood. Not enough guilt.

Not enough of anything…anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

**Two Tears**

**/4/**

They fussed too much. They worried too much. There was no sense in worrying about an empty container. It could do little to damage itself. If it fell, it would be buffeted by the winds or tramped in the cement and that was all.

But they worried. They dragged him home. Made him eat until he puked it all into the toilet bowl.

He's sick, they said. He's killing himself.

He laughed. He wasn't alive to die.

If he were, he'd be able to at least pay a bit of the debt he owed.

All those things he'd broken. All those he'd killed…

He couldn't do anything at all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Two Tears**

**/5/**

They dragged her somewhere, eventually. Some place that was supposed to "help".

And, maybe it did in a sense.

She met _him_ there. Someone who actually understood. Someone who was just like her…and yet not.

Once upon a time, that dead look in his eyes, that dead voice, would have frightened her.

Now it was comforting.

Because he knew. He understood.

He didn't try to say she wasn't to blame. And he didn't try to say she should atone.

'Did you die as well?' he asked, contemplatively, one day.

Maybe she had. She didn't really know. She'd never thought.

If she hadn't, maybe that was a way to atone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Two Tears**

**/6/**

His sister took him somewhere. She couldn't handle him anymore. He was breaking her apart.

He couldn't even feel sorry about that, and that just seemed to make her hurt even more.

He didn't think they could help.

And they didn't.

Though he met a girl and she sort of did.

She understood, at least. She was the same, in a sense. And yet so different. She could cry. She could bleed. He could do neither of those things.

But they were useless. She knew that and so did he. They accomplished nothing.

'What can we do?' she asked.

He had no answer either.


	7. Chapter 7

**Two Tears**

**/7/**

'We're so troublesome,' she said, but she couldn't bring herself to regret. He was a lifeline now. The only one who understood. 'Even now…'

'Yes…' And he was thoughtful, though not sad. She hadn't met an emotion with him. She never would. He'd told her: he'd died long ago.

Maybe she really had as well. Her tears and blood were empty things after all.

'We shouldn't go on like this.'

They had that, at least. The knowledge that what they were doing now was wrong. Still wrong. Still hurting people. Still killing them.

They were only saving the Digital World by being here, if that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Two Tears**

**/8/**

'We shouldn't go on like this.'

It wasn't that he felt guilty. Or she. It was just that they should. Seeing the scars they'd left behind every day. Adding to them.

But how could they stop? Should they just start smiling and pretend to forget?

That was just the one thing they couldn't now do.

'Let's go back to how we were.' But it was a fool's idea. They'd never be able to. Those others' scars had cut in too deep.

It would be lovely to hate them and go back, truly go back.

It would also be impossible. Their eyes had been opened too wide.


	9. Chapter 9

**Two Tears**

**/9/**

'Is life a penitence, you think?'

His voice was contemplative. His question however began to turn the sluggish clogs in her head.

'For others…yes.' Her voice was slow. Her once friends' haunted looks as they tortured themselves by visiting her, week after week. Her family as they chained themselves to her, in case she faded into destruction again. 'For us…I don't think so.'

'Hmm…' She wasn't sure what he was thinking. He had new bruises, she saw.

She had new cuts.

He didn't speak, though.

Her idea.

'Let's destroy these shells of ours together.'

He blinked. He was just as sluggish as her. 'Lets.'

They' decided so quick.


	10. Chapter 10

**Two Tears**

**/10/**

It seemed like an easy way out, but she was right. Now that she'd said it, it seemed like the only way. Snatch their existences away: these existences that continued to cut new scars, bleed fresh blood – not his blood or hers, but theirs. All those people trying to save what couldn't be saved.

And what didn't deserve to be saved.

'Yes,' he said, and then he said it again. 'Yes.'

He wouldn't have to wonder again.

She looked almost…relieved.

He didn't think he would have come to that answer on his own.

And, maybe, she wouldn't have been able to take that step on her own.


	11. Chapter 11

**Two Tears**

**/11/**

Quiet. Out of sight. Out of mind. That was that they desired.

Proof was all they needed to set the others free.

'Will you regret it?'

'I don't think so. Will you?'

'I think we're both past the point of regret.'

Maybe, if it had been before, before they'd fallen, before they'd died, before they'd killed… But it was too late for that. Leomon. Damemon. All those others. Digimon. Humans. She didn't know hers. He knew one. Taiki.

Tragedy was for them.

They didn't deserve a tragic scene.

And they didn't deserve an excuse, a reason to blame.

It was their choice, their action.

Simple, and clean.


	12. Chapter 12

**Two Tears**

**/12/**

They looked happier, their victims said.

The calm before the storm.

Or maybe it was the truth. Who could tell?

Who cared enough to tell?

They met at the bridge. Where countless people had died before and countless would again. Drowned in the water. Fallen and dead after crossing that point of no return.

For them, they'd already crossed the point of no return.

They were two ghosts going to rest.

Two statistics that would be swallowed by the rest.

It was the perfect place. Both of them hesitated just a tiny bit. They were yet to atone.

But they both knew they could never atone.


	13. Chapter 13

**Two Tears**

**/13/**

Others would never know they'd been together. On the same day, yes, but they'd been washed to different places. Picked up by different people. Their obituaries in different newspapers. Their bones in different cemeteries.

And it didn't matter. They'd failed at what they'd set out to do. They'd long since set themselves up to fail and this was the way of relieving them.

But the scars continued to cut, even without them.

Whispers that, if only they'd noticed, they could have saved them. If only they'd done this, or hadn't done that…

That blade would never stop.

Nor the tears they couldn't accept, shed for them.


End file.
